Jose Rodriguez Cruz sentenced to 40 years in Virginia prison for cold-case murder

STAFFORD COUNTY, Va. - Jose Rodriguez Cruz was sentenced on Friday to 40 years in prison for the murder of his first wife, Marta Haydee Rodriguez.

Rodriguez Cruz pleaded guilty in November 2020 to his first wife’s murder, decades after her body was found along Interstate 95 in Virginia.

He must return to West Virginia first to complete his sentence for the murder of his second wife, Pamela Butler.

At the conclusion of that sentence, he will be transferred to the Virginia Department of Corrections to complete the sentence for murdering Marta Rodriguez.

Marta Rodriguez’s body was discovered in 1991, but decades passed before it could be identified.

She’d disappeared from Arlington under mysterious circumstances two years earlier.

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Pamela Butler’s family pressed hard for Stafford County authorities to file charges in the Marta Rodriguez case – in part because Jose Rodriguez Cruz had only received 12 years in connection with her death.

Pamela Butler vanished from her Northwest D.C. home in February 2009. The case received widespread attention for years.